


Snowless Winter

by thecat_13145



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Community: gwaine_quest, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecat_13145/pseuds/thecat_13145
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt "Modern AU setting/reincarnation. Gwaine travels the world and meets everyone from his past (whether he remembers them or not). "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowless Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompt here: http://gwaine-quest.livejournal.com/26268.html?thread=766620#t766620

He’s always being the outsider. The Wanderer, the drifter bound to Camelot by nothing more than his loyalty to Arthur, always somewhere else he should be.

When he was Gawain, it was Lot, his kingdom. Perhaps if he’d being there, if he’d being a proper ruler of his lands his mother…ahh it was no more worth thinking about than whether he should have stayed with the Druids when he was Gwaine. Could he have saved his brother in either case? Maybe, but it’s the past.

A car brushes past him and he grins to himself. The very ancient past.

He’s aware that this is insane. 

Recovered memories, genetic memories, reincarnation, lay lines, all that stuff. If he’d actually tried to explain it to anyone, to any of the others, it was just sound nuts. So he’s set off and hopes that they’ll be there.

He knows where they are of course. Finds them every life, even if he doesn’t want to, like that time in 1880 when he joined the French Foreign Legion. Ran into Elyan at his first posting and even found the princess when he ended up in Egypt for a while.

He slips the pack off his back for a while and rolls his shoulders. Strange to think back then that he could carry nearly a hundred pounds of steel on his body and never think twice about it. 

But things change. Like where he’s heading now. It’s had many names over the years and the one they use now has nothing to do with what it really is.

Sometimes, he puts on one of the BBC history programs and just laughs for an hour or more. Better than any comedy.

When are people going to accept that things don’t change?

Alright, some things do.

Mordred, for example, is not his brother, for which he is grateful. He’s spent enough life time’s extracting that little weasel and trying to save him, which he finally did last time around at Monnes. Fate at last seems to have acknowledged that as enough, as Mordred is now a second cousin and spin doctor to Morganna. He’s still got the same size chip on his shoulder and still will probably be the one who destroys the world, but it’s best not to think about that, to just leave him and Morganna alone.

Morganna is a Politian in this incarnation. Sometimes tipped as a future prime minster, not that that surprises him. Morganna was born to rule. Even in fourteen something or other, when her father (not Uther, he thinks it might have being Percival) had her shut away in a nunnery, she was still the Abbotess before she was 25. Might have even risen to be pope, if it hadn’t being for the Plague. Martin Luther wouldn’t have stood a chance.

He pauses briefly, letting the magic sing in his veins, guide him. He’s never magic in any of his lives, that’s not his way, but he is a channel for magic. Or at least that was what Merlin told him when he asked how come he could remember when none of the others could? When was that? Must have being after Knights-Templar-fleeing to England (running to Morganna as Abbotess), but before that time on the stage in London. 

That had being a good life time. Shakespeare, Marlowe, he trod the boards with all of them. A golden age of drama they called it and they were right. 

Plus the life of an actor wasn’t actually that different from one of a night. Lots of wildly impractical clothes, lots of hanging around, lots of fights. 

He’d tried explaining that to Leon once, or whatever he was calling himself that lifetime, but Leon just smiled and continued fiddling with sheet (he’d being playing Mark Antony, but dammed if he can remember if he was about to bury Cesar or commit suicide) and reminded him that if he ruined another Jerkin that week, it was coming out of his wages, but that was Leon, or Kay, or whatever else he decided to call himself.

Leon was the organiser; the one who made sure the world didn’t fall down around them. The Happiest he’d ever seen the man, including Camelot, was in 1943. Leon in an RAF uniform standing over a huge map, supervising the women (including at least two he definitely remembered from Camelot) moving tiny planes and armies around, while he explained to Churchill what was going on. Leon would always serve his king, or queen as the case might be, while quietly sliding out of legends so swiftly that people forgot about him. But he never did.

He forced his mind off Leon. If the Princess was returning, and the way the magic was surging, singing through him it seemed likely, then Leon would be there.

“You need a lift mate?” almost as though Merlin had conjured it, he turned to see a sleek black car edging its way through the narrow streets. Though the rolled down window, he could see red leather seats.

“How do you know you’re going my way?”

Leon chucked golden curls out of his face. “I think it’s a fair bet.”

There’s a moment where he considers refusing, continuing up the road and sparing himself some heart ache. Then he decides sod it, this is supposed to be the golden age, the return of the high king. 

Plus, he’s never being able to refuse anything Leon asked of him. Being in love with him every lifetime, though it’s only in about 9 or 10 that he’s actually got what he wanted.

First time around, Kay refused to take advantage of what he saw as misplaced hero-worship of a younger knight of one who was already skilled in arms. It wasn’t, but try convincing Kay of that. Leon had loved him, but their time together had being so short. As Gywain, he had Neri for a lifetime, only to see him die because he would not forswear his king. As Gwalchmei, they had being on opposing sides, only meeting on the battlefield. He had watched this man, name unknown, moving through the mountains of Snowdian, only recognizing him as an arrow pieced him. As Gauvain, their love had being forbidden with the harshest punishments of the order against them.

A hand touches him, jerking him out of the past.

“You’re thinking too much.”

Gwaine rolled his eyes. “Now that’s an accusation I don’t hear too often. Most say I don’t think enough.”

Leon rolled his eyes. “You have never thought enough about the things that mattered.” He reached out, taking Gwaine’s rucksack without a murmur and setting it into the boot.

Gwaine clambered into the car, grinning as he saw the interior.

“Camelot Red, Leon? Or what should I call this time?”

“It’s Leon again.” Leon replied, smiling as he took his seat. “And it’s how the car came. You can blame my employer.”

“Oh really and whose that?” 

Leon rolled his eyes, starting the engine. “Three guess, or hasn’t occurred to you to wonder how one with no magic in him knew where you were?”

Gwaine shrugged. “Magic can find you if you’re needed.” He paused, putting his head to one side. “Merlin huh? Haven’t’ seen him since ’56. What’s he doing?”

“Working.” Leon shook his head. “The sixties were not a good period for him, if you recall and the less said about the seventies and eighties the better.” He winced. “Then he felt the magic running through him and” he shrugged. “Well you remember how good he was in the last war. MI13 was the obvious choice. Means he can keep an eye on Morganna, hopefully keep her in check this time.”

Gwaine snorted because he doesn’t believe anyone can check Morganna. Then again, if anyone stands a chance, it was Leon and Merlin. Neither were naturally political animals, too honorable for that.

But both were automatically children of the court, and you didn’t survive like that without learning a thing or two.

“Think Lancelot will be there?” He asked, casually. He and Lancelot had always rubbed along well enough, normally until Lancelot’s love for Gwenivere overcame his loyalty to Arthur. Without Arthur, they had managed to rub around long enough.

Lancelot was magic, but neither good nor bad magic. Just dependent on how it was viewed, how it was used. Horrible when he was Gawain, responsible for the end of Camelot. Less so when he was Gwaine, but he still ranked Lancelot’s death as the beginning of the end, so maybe…

Leon leant over, hitting him on the back of the head.

“Stop thinking.” He said, firmly. “This the golden age. The one promised for so long. Not even Lancelot can mess it up this time.”

“Promise?” Gwaine asked, aware that he sounded like that child who had come to his uncle’s court so long ago.

“Promise.” Leon said. He glanced up. “Look.”

The lake was before them. Gwaine could see the boat coming across on it.

He smiled.

“Trust the princess to know how to make an entrance.”


End file.
